This invention relates to cooking. More particularly, this invention relates to a device for facilitating the preparation of cooked food items. This invention also relates to an associated method used in cooking.
Anyone who has made a serious attempt at quality cooking knows the inconvenience of preparing small quantities of multiple ingredients requiring different preparation times. Heating ingredients together in a melange usually results in a less appealing final product than cooking the ingredients separately and combining individually prepared moieties just prior to final presentation, or at another optimum time. Separate preparation of ingredients, however, poses a problem of maintaining already prepared portions in a state of "hot standby" while waiting for further preparation steps, or else involves the nuisance of using separate pans or utensils for small quantities of ingredients. Accordingly, there is a need for a pan or utensil which will independently permit optimum preparation and standby storage of a variety of small ingredient portions.
It is known to provide a cooking surface with multiple cooking temperatures. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,987,827 to Marquez discloses an apparatus for cooking foodstuffs, particularly tortillas, which has a first heating area for cooking a tortilla, and a second heating area for warming a tortilla during a subsequent filling operation. Distinct electric heating elements are provided with separate thermostatic controls under a common cooking surface. U.S. Pat. No. 4,462,388 to Bohl and U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,777 to Hiller disclose a series of frying pans with a cooking surface and one or more "depositing" surfaces, for the warming of food. The depositing surfaces are elevated with respect to the cooking surface and designed not to be in direct contact with a burner element or heat source on an underside. The disclosed pans appear to solve the problem of providing a unified utensil for the cooking and holding of small portions of foodstuffs, but are of specialized construction, and require owners of existing cookware to acquire complete new pans for combining a cooking and warming function.